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~Guest 468390
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Thu Oct 11, 2018 2:57 pm
Posts: 2
PostPosted: Wed May 15, 2019 3:47 pm 
 

It remains quite laughable that a band like Alice in Chains has a metal-archives page, based solely, i would presume, on the Facelift album, but Tad continues to be snubbed. After reading through threads about them on here, it seems the two most common reasons they are denied are because 1) they are a "Grunge" band, and 2) they don't have a Metal album. Well, 1) "Grunge" is a made-up, bullshit term that has no meaning whatsoever. It was concocted as an inside joke that ballooned into a major record label marketing strategy. The term means zilch when applied to the categorization of music. If Tad are considered "Grunge", then metal-archives-approved bands such as Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and the Melvins are also very much considered to be the same, by all accounts. AIC, Soundgarden and Tad are/were all Alternative Rock bands who occasionally delved deeper into the realm of Alternative Metal (see bands such as Helmet, Prong, Fudge Tunnel, Freak Kitchen - all metal-archives approved.) Number 2: Tad does have a Metal album. Their first album, God's Balls, as well as the Salt Lick EP, are certainly worthy of being referred to as Alternative Metal releases, and the band should be accepted based on them alone, not to mention other assorted songs which came from the 8-Way Santa and Inhaler albums.

I swear, sometimes I do not get the rationale behind who is deemed worthy of being accepted and who is not. You accept a band like Volbeat, but continue to stonewall Rammstein, whom is clearly the heavier band. Does that not seem the least bit ludicrous? No, well how about a band like Wardruna? I like Wardruna, personally. Great stuff. I'll put it on if I want to hear some more recent, killer Neo-folk music. But that's what they are - Folk music. Not Folk Metal. Not even in the realm of being close. They are CLEARLY nowhere near a Metal band, but there they are, accepted. I suppose they got accepted based on some sort of 'six degrees of separation' from Gorgoroth and Gaahl. Which, okay, if you're going to go that route, then why not include Mad Season too, since AIC is already on the site? See, makes no sense.

To close, I don't get the attitude of selective exclusion from the mods of this site. If certain bands (Tad/Rammstein/etc.) keep coming up as constant question marks, year after year, then why persist in denying their admittance? What you are really accomplishing is just telling your members that they don't know what Metal music sounds like, and that you do. We all can do without such arrogance. Consider it.

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MutantClannfear
Blank Czech

Joined: Thu May 27, 2010 12:12 am
Posts: 3624
Location: United States
PostPosted: Wed May 15, 2019 4:04 pm 
 

So I can't speak to Tad, but just to clear up a couple misconceptions first.
notoftheherd wrote:
You accept a band like Volbeat, but continue to stonewall Rammstein, whom is clearly the heavier band. Does that not seem the least bit ludicrous?

Rammstein may very well be a heavier band, but we don't document "heavy" bands, we document bands with metal albums. Merzbow is heavier than 99% of the stuff we catalog and they're not here.
notoftheherd wrote:
No, well how about a band like Wardruna? I like Wardruna, personally. Great stuff. I'll put it on if I want to hear some more recent, killer Neo-folk music. But that's what they are - Folk music. Not Folk Metal. Not even in the realm of being close. They are CLEARLY nowhere near a Metal band, but there they are, accepted. I suppose they got accepted based on some sort of 'six degrees of separation' from Gorgoroth and Gaahl. Which, okay, if you're going to go that route, then why not include Mad Season too, since AIC is already on the site? See, makes no sense.

Wardruna are not here under any pretense of being a metal band. They are accepted as a selected exception. Our current policy is that we include certain non-metal projects if we see them as being integral to the metal scene in some way. Karl Sanders' solo project is a good example of this - not metal in the slightest, but very firmly entrenched in the metal scene such that somebody interested in metal might look for them in a metal database. Does Mad Season fulfill these criteria? Hardly. They were a supergroup of a bunch of bands that nobody really commonly thinks of as being metal, marketed as a grunge band themselves, and had basically no exposure within the metal scene. Not really relevant in terms of what we try to catalog here.

BTW, I'd say Alice in Chains have much more metal releases than Facelift. Black Gives Way to Blue in particular strikes me as metal through-and-through aside from the ballads. Most of the riffs on that album border on Sabbathian doom metal.
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MutantClannfear
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Joined: Thu May 27, 2010 12:12 am
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PostPosted: Wed May 15, 2019 4:32 pm 
 

I'm listening to Tad's album God's Balls and the EP Salt Lick, even though I think enough people have reviewed this band over the years that it's not necessary anymore. For the record, I agree this has metal influences and metal riffs on occasion, but so far I wouldn't characterize these as predominantly metal albums. It's "grunge" (alternative/stoner rock, if you want to avoid that term) with a heavy guitar tone and occasional metal riffs, the EP more thereof than the full-length, but I don't think either is a predominantly metal album when viewed holistically. And yeah, I do think this is very materially different from Alice and Chains and the early Soundgarden material for which that band is on the Metal Archives, for the record. Somebody else can chime in if they want, but I think most people on the staff would agree that it's not predominantly metal as we define it here. Not that this should be taken as an official slight on the band's reputation on behalf of MA - we're not a judge of musical quality here - but it doesn't seem in line with what we would want to include here.
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raspberrysoda
Metalhead

Joined: Sat Aug 02, 2014 4:51 pm
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PostPosted: Thu May 16, 2019 5:04 am 
 

Inhaler is a highly grungy groove metal album. It has the riffs and the metal atmosphere... Reminds me of Betty era Helmet and Mindfunk. It's the more metallic album of their discography imo
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MutantClannfear
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PostPosted: Thu May 16, 2019 8:48 am 
 

We’ll look into it.
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Midnight Rider
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2016 6:07 pm
Posts: 400
PostPosted: Thu May 16, 2019 2:40 pm 
 

raspberrysoda wrote:
Inhaler is a highly grungy groove metal album. It has the riffs and the metal atmosphere... Reminds me of Betty era Helmet and Mindfunk. It's the more metallic album of their discography imo

A groove metal album? no way.

I'm familiar with these guys discography and grunge overall. Apart from some scarce metal riffs (especially on their debut God's Balls), they can easily be described as grunge + alternative metal/rock. Yeah, there's aggressiveness in their music but they don't play the kind of heavy or groove metal riffs that would make them acceptable here.

They may be heavy (and surely belong to the heaviest bunch of the "grunge" bands) but they're not metal.

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~Guest 468390
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Thu Oct 11, 2018 2:57 pm
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PostPosted: Fri May 17, 2019 2:23 pm 
 

MutantClannfear wrote: "Our current policy is that we include certain non-metal projects if we see them as being integral to the metal scene in some way. Karl Sanders' solo project is a good example of this - not metal in the slightest, but very firmly entrenched in the metal scene such that somebody interested in metal might look for them in a metal database."

Interesting. Seems VERY selective to me, though. For instance, I see the page for the extremely popular band Behemoth (Pol), but no page for Nergal's recent, decidedly non-Metal side-project Me and That Man. I also see the page for Thrash Metal legends Metallica, but no page for Spastik Children. Four of the eight historical members of Metallica (James, Kirk, Cliff & Jason) were once members of this band. Granted, I have no information to go on for the band's output or musical style (largely because there is no metal-archives page for the band), but using your rationale of Metallica being "very firmly entrenched in the metal scene such that somebody interested in metal might look for them in a metal database", you would be forced to think that users looking into the history of Metallica may find it interesting to research members' side-projects, such as Spastik Children. You know, like users who are fans of Nile might wish to visit the page of Karl Sanders' solo project, for more prospective on his non-Nile body of work. Given I already stated that I'm not aware of Spastik Children's discography (or lack thereof), you might counter by stating that the band has no official releases and, therefore, does not warrant its own metal-archives page. If that is the case, perhaps you could explain how and why the band Amen from Poland, for example, has a metal-archives page:
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Amen/67095

How does this all tie in to Tad, you might ask? Well, Tad is not the only band that Tad Doyle has been a member of. Sure enough, there are three other bands that he has been a member of that, in fact, do have metal-archives pages.:
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Br ... 3540292728
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Lumbar/3540372770
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Roareth/3540311016

So, I might be inclined to ask (and I certainly am) why users who come to this site to peruse the band pages of, say, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth or Lumbar are not entitled to access a linking page to a band such as Tad.. or even Hog Molly, for that matter. Many users who are introduced to Tad Doyle through the music of Brothers of the Sonic Cloth may be interested to learn about the history of this officially-sanctioned Metal band's vocalist/guitarist, much in the way that fans of Nile would be interested in the Karl Sanders solo project, or fans of Gorgoroth would be interested in Gaahl's and Kvitrafn's involvement in the decidedly non-Metal band Wardruna.

So, here we have it. Wardruna and Karl Sanders' solo project are fine and cleared for metal-archives pages, even though it is freely-admitted that they, in and of themselves, have no claim to any sort of Metal music style. However, a dude like Tad Doyle, with three (3) metal-archives-approved bands to his credit, is not suitable for having his most famous, most searched, and highest-contentioned -as-a-Metal-band band included on this site. Never mind the fact that Tad (the band) is light years closer to what anyone would call Metal than Wardruna or Karl Sanders. Even though Tad was basically Alternative Rock/Metal's version of Motörhead - straddling the line between Hard Rock and Metal for most of their careers, respectively. And that's exactly how I think of the band Tad. They were the Motörhead of their time. Can you imagine the e-riot that would ensue if the mods of this site ever decided to take down Motörhead's page?!

Hopefully, I've given proper examples and reasoning that force any rational-thinking individual to seriously revisit the standards and practices of accepting or denying bands on this site. I think this site does a great service to Metal music. But the completely arbitrary method of selective exclusion of this band or that band that continues to go on is ridiculous. If you have a set of rules, then they are rules to be followed by everyone, for everyone and every band. There is no need to play favorites.

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OpsiusCato
Mexican Metal Inquisition

Joined: Thu Oct 05, 2006 4:42 am
Posts: 3006
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Fri May 17, 2019 2:42 pm 
 

Reading isn't your forte, right? Had you cared to read, you would've found the release for Amen is listed in the additional notes.

I just bumped it to the top to prevent non-readers like you missing it in the future.
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MutantClannfear
Blank Czech

Joined: Thu May 27, 2010 12:12 am
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PostPosted: Sat May 18, 2019 2:11 am 
 

The side project/selected exception clauses are admittedly very arbitrary, that much we can concede. It’s hard to get everyone to agree on what constitutes a “significant” side project or even whether such bands should be included at all. But I can point towards a few general guidelines/policies that may explain what you see as inconsistencies.

First, if we’re documenting a non-metal band, we favor those that truly made an impact, and typically that coincides with projects that have a decently long, established discography. This is not a golden rule, but generally we want to make sure that if a band is included while not being metal, it was historically relevant and not just a project resulting from a single session. That’s why relatively longer-standing projects like Wardruna are on the site while a one-off project like Me and That Man or Casualties of Cool is not (yet).

Second, the side project policy has never worked in reverse, i.e. a musician who has several lesser-known metal projects getting their non-metal main project added as an exception. That is, we’re not adding Misfits because Glenn Danzig’s solo project is metal. We’re not adding Slipknot because they were the main project of Sinsaenum drummer Joey Jordison. And so on.

Finally - and this is my general impression/opinion, not a written policy, so others may disagree - the degree of metal influence in these selected exceptions does not matter so much as their influence on metal and their position within the scene of metal music. This doesn’t hold as much for the proto-metal exceptions - for those they do tend to be more metal than their contemporaries (but that makes sense, because a purely hard rock band probably wouldn’t influence the metal scene that much) - but for the average exception, a band doesn’t get more weight towards being on the site just because it sounds partially metal. Either it’s metal (in which case this doesn’t matter), or we’ve judged it to be historically relevant. The half-measures don’t tend to factor into our calculus.

I’d like to ask that we end this public discussion here, since I feel like we’re at an impasse, and the original topic of the thread (evaluating Tad) has been answered thoroughly at this point. If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me.
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